End of the Internet Predicted!
Torrent at 11
The Oracle Bones of IPv4
Some personal divination by
Geoff Huston
APNIC
The Art of Divination
The Oracle Bone Questions:
1. When will we ‘exhaust’ IPv4?
2. Why is this a problem?
3. What will happen at the ‘exhaustion’
point?
4. What are the implications for industry
players?
1. When will we ‘exhaust” IPv4?
A. When will we stop routing IPv4 in our
networks?
–
We will probably still route IPv4 for some decades
to come
B. When will the RIRs have no more IPv4
addresses to distribute?
–
Sometime between 2010 and 2013
C. When will IANA have no more IPv4 addresses
to pass to the RIRs
–
Sometime between 2009 and 2012
2. Why is this a problem?
• Because the unallocated pool meets
growth demand for IPv4-based Internet
service deployment
• In the absence of an unallocated address
pool to satisfy growth demands:
– Un-met address demand will increase
– Placing an escalating scarcity premium on
IPv4 addresses
2. Why is this a problem?
• This scarcity may create pricing pressure on
IPv4 addresses
– Where demand exceeds supply then price
escalation is a common outcome in classic markets
• This imposes additional costs on industry
players
– These costs may place IPv4 addresses out of reach
of some players
• Which, in turn, may cause additional costs for
end consumers of Internet services
• These are probably undesireable outcomes
that may not be equitable, efficient or effective
3. At the IPv4 Exhaustion Point …
What are our choices?
One or more of:
 IPv4 + NATs
 IPv4 trading markets
 IPv6 deployment
NAT-PT + IPv4?
• Deploy more NAT-PT units within the
network
– How much will it cost? Can the cost be
externalized?
– What services can / cannot be offered? Can
these services adapt to NATs?
– How long / how large can such a NAT
strategy last?
Are NATs viable in the short term?
Yes
– Deployment costs are externalized away from
network operators
– They support a viable subset of Internet services
– They are already extensively deployed
– They have already influenced application
architectures
Are NATs viable in the long term?
Probably not
The major problem with NATs from an application
implementation perspective is the non-uniformity of
NAT behaviour
– this could be fixed
The major problem with NATs from an application
architecture perspective is complexity bloat:
• application-specific identification domains,
• NAT-mediated application-specific rendezvous functions,
• multi-party distributed state application behaviours
• multi-ganged NAT behaviours
– there is no easy fix for this
3. At the IPv4 Exhaustion Point …
What are our choices?
One or more of:
 IPv4 + NATs
 IPv4 trading markets
 IPv6 deployment
IPv4 Trading?
• Redistribution of IPv4 address blocks
through the operation of trading markets?
– How can such markets operate?
– How much will IPv4 addresses cost now?
– How much will IPv4 addresses cost later?
– Can the outcomes continue to be routed?
IPv4 Trading?
• Balancing supply and demand through an open
market with price signals
– For a seller – the ability to capitalize the value of
under-used resources
– For a buyer – place a utility efficiency value on
access to the resource
• Risks:
–
–
–
–
–
–
Market distortions
Price uncertainty
Captive buyers
Speculative market players
Regulatory intervention
Routing load through address block fragmentation
Is an IPv4 trading market viable for
the short term?
Probably yes
This is a conventional distribution function which
could be undertaken through interactions between
address sellers and buyers
Price signals could provide motivation for greater
levels of efficiency of address deployment
Within such a framework there are potential
implications for the viability of the routing system
which are not well understood
Is an IPv4 trading market viable for
the long term?
Unlikely
An IPv4 address trading market can provide a short term incentive
to expose unused addresses for reuse, and can provide incentives
for high address utilization efficiencies - but the longer term risks of
market distortion are high.
An IPv4 market exposes additional risk factors in variability of
supply availability and pricing that are expressed as cost elements
to the service provider -- that ultimately would be reflected in end
user cost escalation.
An IPv4 market does not create new IPv4 addresses. It can create
short term economic incentives to increase address utilization
efficiencies, or fund the deployment of alternative technologies. But
an address trading market cannot fuel network growth indefinitely.
Markets cannot make the finite infinite.
3. At the IPv4 Exhaustion Point …
What are our choices?
One or more of:
 IPv4 + NATs
 IPv4 trading markets
 IPv6 deployment
IPv6 Deployment?
• Deploy IPv6
– How much will it cost?
– How long will it take?
– When will customers and services
transition?
– When can we stop also supporting IPv4?
IPv6 short term viability?
Still uncertain
Few immediate commercial incentives to
drive ISP deployment
No evident ability to externalize deployment
costs
No dense service base and few compelling
services to drive consumer-level demands
IPv6 – long term viable?
Given the state of the current alternatives - it had
better be!
It offers leverage into larger networks with
stronger characteristics of utility service
models. It has the potential to reduce some of
the complexities of network service
architectures.
But the gains here are long term outcomes,
while the transition cost is short term
4. Implications
• there is no “flag day” for transition
• IPv4 addresses will continue to be in
demand beyond the date of exhaustion of
the unallocated pool
– But the mechanisms of management of the
address distribution function will change
• coexistence of multiple service models is
expensive
– IPv4 + IPv4 / NATs + IPv6
4. Implications
For network managers:
Understanding growth requirements and
matching this to address accessibility
Forward planning to minimize disruption risk
For product and service vendors:
Planning ahead of demand rather than lagging
For regulators and policy makers:
Phrasing clear and achievable objectives with
unambiguous regulatory signals to industry
players
4. Implications
It is likely that there will be some
disruptive aspects during this exhaustion
condition
This will probably not be seamless nor
costless
Coping with Crises
Denial
Panic
Anger
Blame Shifting
Bargaining
Revisionism
Recovery
Acceptance
Time
Coping with Crises – IPv4 Exhaustion
Denial
Panic
Anger
You are here
Blame Shifting
Bargaining
Revisionism
Recovery
Acceptance
Time
Thank You